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Saturday, 29 June 2013

Book Review - Exploring Canework in Polymer Clay

I was super lucky enough to recently win a give-away by Cyndi Lavin of Beading Arts. There are some great resources on her site for beaders, mixed media artists and polymer clayers and Cyndi has some great free tutorials too - one of my favourites is the splendiferous Resin Polymer Clay Bezel, pictured below.

Anyhoos, back to the review. The give-away was for the beautiful paperback Exploring Canework in Polymer Clay : Color, Pattern, Surface Design by Patricia Kimle. Published by Kalmbach and also readily available from all the majors like the Book Depository and Amazon. (Sorry am too lazy to post the links here but it's easy to find.)

This book was just perfect for me. I've been playing with clay for around two years now but I still consider myself a beginner since kidlings and life intrude significantly on playtime.

Plentiful pictures, easy instructions and lots of different canes and caning techniques really got my fingers itching to get stuck in to the clay. I'd love to pop up some piccies of the canes covered inside but I couldn't find any available from the publisher and flu of the big boy has prevented me from making any of my own as yet. Here's the contents to give you an idea;

Introduction

Getting Started

Canework Basics:

An Early Innovation

Tools

Clay

Conditioning

Baking

Finishing

Polishing

Design Lessons:

COLOR

Hue

Saturation

Value

Color Schemes

SKINNER BLEND

CONSTRUCTING, REDUCING AND REPEATING

Block Canes

Radial Canes

Random or Organic Canes

CANE SLICES

Simple Canes:

Striped Canes

Checkerboard Canes

Bull’s-Eye Canes

Spiral Canes

Complex Canes:

Combination Canes

Kaleidoscope Canes

Floral Canes

Translucent Canes and Overlay Patterns

Artist's Gallery

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Basically think of a basic cane and it's probably covered in this book : rose cane, brain cane, jelly roll, woven, that fabulous one that looks fractal but dang if I can remember the name of it and book is in bedroom with sick hubby at mo, and many, MANY, more.

There's sections on basic colour theory, design elements and finishing and although there's no actual projects there are plenty of ideas of how to use the canes.

I can highly recommend this book from a beginner and more advanced beginner's perspective and I'm not even being paid to say so! So you know it must be good!

Off to brew up some hot lemon to see if I can shift those germs from hubby. Have a great weekend. xxx